These sites have made some effort to respond to user concerns: Facebook has been working with women’s rights groups on hate speech, Twitter updated their rules on abusive behaviour and YouTube is trialling the Deputy Program, which relies on trusted flaggers to notify them of policy violations.

But they haven’t done enough, especially for women outside of the narrow scope of the US and Europe.
In some countries, women have to go to the market to fax abuse reports, and language and cultural barriers are pervasive. We don’t know who responds to reports and how they are trained, and we haven’t seen data on reporting demographics and success.

This is about us and our rights. Violence stifles freedom of expression, and we can work together to develop solutions that promote our rights to freedom of speech and freedom from violence.

So we’re targeting the big three. We want Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to:

• Take a clear stand on violence against women in their terms of service
• Engage with diverse civil society to find solutions for safer platforms

Take Back the Tech! wants you to join us in demanding these changes starting 21 July. You can participate in the following ways:

• Ask: “What are you doing about violence against women?” Use our questions and tweets to request more information from these companies under #WhatAreYouDoingAboutVAW.

• Rate: Use our report card format to rate social media on various aspects related to violence against women. We’ll compile all user report cards and share the results.

• Demand: Tell these companies what you want. Share your solutions. We’ll follow up by sending them crowdsourced ideas they can put into practice.

Find more information and digital content in our campaign kit (available at https://www.takebackthetech.net/), use #WhatAreYouDoingAboutVAW and follow @takebackthetech for the continuing conversation. Let us know about your actions by writing to info@takebackthetech.net.

Promote transparency and safe spaces. Demand that social media take a stand. Take back the tech!